As stated above, the only negative the attitude era had was that is that nothing could ever come up against WWF/E from 1999-2002 - thats the only negative it had. Perhaps 1 other negative would be the amount of hardcore matches, weapons and lack of rules which only makes todays WWE much worse and much more boring.

The Attitude Era was bad as far as the constant title changes that happened, the level of matches that happened, and what a traditional face and heel are met suppose to be, also trying to establish new talent without trying to knock down the another establishing young talent that's trying to get over. Before the Attitude Era, it was always superstar, or potential superstart against the jobber. Those matches were used to develop a character, their finisher etc etc. Now you see a match like CM Punk vs Daniel Bryan, or Dolph Ziggler vs Kofi Kingston for example on free TV every single week. So 1) you are establishing one character, but at the same time, you are knocking down the other resulting in nobody getting over. Now fans act like to build a young superstar is to have them work a program with a John Cena, or Triple H, or Undertaker and win. Realistically a young superstar is an underdog going against those guys and to have the young guy when hurts the arua of a top draw getting pinned by an up and coming. So if you have wrestler A beating John Cena on TV, and wrestler B beating John Cena on PPV, and have Cena or any top draw lose, then it wouldn't be a surprised if the veterans were jobbing out to the rookies. When you see the top guys lose, nobody cares. Before the Attitude Era, if a wrestler like the Undertaker, Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Warrior, Randy Savage, it was a big deal. Now when you see Cena get his shoulders pinned to the match, it's forgotten in 2 weeks because we've seen CM Punk pin his shoulders twice on PPV and mulitple times on TV. We've seen Sheamus, Triple H, Randy Orton, Tensei, Johnny Ace and the Miz pin Cena's shoulder's. We've seen R-truth win a tables match against Cena and we've Cena Del Rio win a last man standing match against him. So when someone pins a top guy, it doesn't send shockwaves like it would before the Attitude Era.

People complain about newer talent not getting over, but what they mean is that their favourite isn't getting over, everyone else can go to hell. I'm for as many people getting over as possible, it would improve the show and the more over people there are, the more avenues there are to push new talent, yes, your favourites are more likely to get pushed if there are more over people to feud with.

At the time it was the greatest thing on television, it was entertaining, fresh and exciting... but... some of the traditional elements of the wrestling industry that had to make way for this new form of wrestling has left the industry as a whole in a damaged way. I think the biggest example of this would be the traditional chairshot. Go back to pre-Attitude wrestling and a single chairshot could be used as a legitimate storyline tool and become a massive deal. The face takes a chairshot to the head, the heel looked like an evil, ruthless human who was willing to risk maiming another man for his own gains. So now the audience has sympathy for the face and the heel looks like a monster. That single chairshot could then keep the face off TV for a few weeks, we're updated on his condition, his return is built up and the fans are looking forward to his return where he will undoubtedly face his nemesis, who has spent the time the face has been away building up to the match with promos and showing his dominance in matches against jobbers and midcarders.

Now look at the chairshot during the Attitude Era, if there wasn't multiple chairshots during an average TV Taping it was a rarity. You had guys like Mick Foley taking 5 or 10 shots in a row without it hardly phasing them and still winning the match with it escalating until the chairshot had become seen as so ineffective that it was no longer seen as a real danger. Within a couple of years of the Attitude Era a chairshot was about as effective as a Headlock and so could no longer be used as a storyline tool. This is where the Attitude Era has damaged the business as a whole, the extremes it took everything to has left some of the traditional core of what the business used for years as relics from an time gone by, some if not most of which could be the fix to the majority of the problems the industry suffers with today.

if they kept it at least like from 2002 till 2006 every thing would've been just fine

Nailed it . The post attitude era was good until we got to the john cena era. Then everything went to shit . People are comparing the rock'n' wrestling era to what we have now but not only is the fact that in 2012 we have to watch something similar to the eighties unacceptable , the late eighties product was actually ..edgier than what we have now !!! Think about it, the heels looked like a million $ in the weeklies and only in the PPV's did the faces get revenge . Now we have heels that must look like complete fools in every freakin raw and smackdown , so that ...the kids can go home happy, i guess . Add to that many of the wrestlers of the eighties were huge superstars that looked and acted like stars , unlike the bland "superstars" that we have today and we come to the sad conslusion that this is the worst period of wrestling ever .

It didn't ruin the industry. It ruined the fans' perception of the industry and set exceptions that could never be reached. The AE is like Michael Jordan. Both the WWE & NBA never before or after reached such high heights and had so much popularity. And now, no matter how many years go by and no matter how many new superstars/players come through, the comparisons to MJ/AE will never end.

The only way the Attitude/MNW era ruined wrestling, is that it was too good and everything looks mediocre, bland and lifeless in comparison. It was the greatest, best and most successful period this industry will ever see and rightfully so with the passion and unbelievable roster of the greatest superstars of all time all at the same time from WWF, WCW and ECW. The standard was set and nothing will ever come close to it.

No one is saying it isn't successful, but it ruined a lot of things, for one psychology in matches, which goes back to my point about the i quit matches, now a chair shot means nothing, when back in the days before the Attitude Era it was a match ender, and was seen as the one of the lowest things a heel could do a face.

So wait, Attitude ruined matches because they had a chair shot end a match, which it rightly should, and TODAY they don't? That don't make a lick of sense. Its the current eras' fault for going too overboard and allowing people to sustain ridiculous amounts of damage. The whole concept behind a foreign object is that it gives a person an advantage by knocking the other guy senseless. If it didn't, then they wouldn't be illegal and would be fine to use. Hence, to build up the mystique around the use of foreign objects, they have to be shown as being devastating weapons. A chair shot to the head ending a match makes perfect sense-its a 'weapon', that's why its effects are so destructive, and that's also why its not allowed in regular matches due to the unfair advantages it can provide. Today, people kick out from 3 chairshots and 2 finishers. If anything, the current era is ruining the integral concepts and ideas of past generations that helped BUILD pro wrestling.

In fact, I see occurrences like Cena no selling Jericho's sleeper on the ladder and continuing to climb it from MiTB as a shitty patch for lazy story telling and bad psychology. Back in the day the wrestlers could build up psychology on their own very well and the introduction of weapons was almost like a cherry on the sundae, so to speak. Today, so few guys know how to tell a story and properly implement ring psychology that sometimes they just revert to using weapons or pulling off physically impossible feats as a means of building those things up, which I think is a really lame and cheap shortcut to get a match over. It requires no skill. Guys like Austin and Rock could get a better reaction because they KNEW how to play up that psychology and emotion in a match based on their own in ring abilities. Meantime in 2012, John Cena, who knows dick all about ring psychology, says fuck it and takes a horrendous amount of punishment from Brock Lesnar and then just wins after 2 moves. Jesus, that match was blood, violence and weapons galore. If you take every shortcut in the book as a back door into making the match seem better than it is, I have no respect for you. YOU don't have the ability, you're using a prop to give off the illusion that you do.

And for anyone who is going to start quoting matches from Attitude that were violent by saying they were just doing the same thing, please save your breath because it wasn't by ANY stretch the same thing. Perfect example-Rock vs Mankind Royal Rumble 1999. Aside from the great chemistry they had in ring together, which helps build up psychology, they were playing up the fact that Mankind had never said the words I Quit, that he was legendary for the punishment he could take and that Rock would basically have to kill him to win. Rock was putting on his regular smart ass routine, but there were small instances where you could see past that and saw that he was actually a bit intimidated by Foley, especially since Mankind had beaten him once already (and choked him out). As Mankind famously said, "How does it feel, Rock, to be in a match that you can't win and I can't lose?" They built that entire thing up so well and it delivered on every level.

Cena vs Brock...what psychology was there? That Brock could physically dominate Cena? Yeah, the finish really hammered that home. That Cena was on a losing streak (which was all of one match against Rock)? Again, the finish disagrees. Why did Brock go after Cena in the first place? Just because he likes hurting people? Why not go after Hunter and bypass Cena then? Why did Edge need to give Cena a pep talk and basically say "you have to win" as if that wasn't obvious in any match? Because the reputation of the company was at stake and they couldn't let someone who worked for another company get a win?

So yeah, that angle means absolutely nothing. Had they not fucked up they could have built to something huge down the line, like an undefeated Brock vs undefeated Undertaker at WM. That would have huge psychology and have possibly some great story telling. Too bad they ruined it.

"I am EC3. I am the man. I am handpicked. I am the destiny of this company...I'm the new game."

That's not what he said, what he said was before the Attitude Era one chair shot was a match ender, during the Attitude Era we've seen the chair shot become less and less lethal until it's at the point it's at today where it can't be used as a match ender anymore due to the fact that during the Attitude Era people were taking anything up to 15/20 chair shots to the head and still not losing. I.E. it's no longer effective.

That's not what he said, what he said was before the Attitude Era one chair shot was a match ender, during the Attitude Era we've seen the chair shot become less and less lethal until it's at the point it's at today where it can't be used as a match ender anymore due to the fact that during the Attitude Era people were taking anything up to 15/20 chair shots to the head and still not losing. I.E. it's no longer effective.

I'm pretty sure that the reason chair shots don't end matches today is because the most damaging place to hit a guy is in the head and they will not, under any circumstances, allow head shots anymore. That's why you see tons of chair shots to the body, which obviously doesn't do as much damage. The back can take much more damage than the skull and brain can.

That is, unless you're Mankind, but that made perfect sense. The Fed had never seen a Mick Foley type who could withstand that much punishment, and that was part of what was so inventive about the character. Aside from Taker who would be kayfabe buried alive or put in a casket, you SAW the shit that happened to Foley and the more that happened, the more over he was. Just like swearing was to Austin, brutality was to Mick.

But why not look back farther?

Look at this video of a match between Hogan and Vader from Uncensored 1995 (which would have been in March). Years before Attitude even started and in this one video I count 5 chairshots to Vader's head, 1 to his back, and several more by Flair on Hogan and Renegade (some are in part 11 of the event). Now, how come we don't say that WCW in 1995 was the precursor to the overuse of chairs and the desensitization towards violence? Just looking for consistency.

"I am EC3. I am the man. I am handpicked. I am the destiny of this company...I'm the new game."

The reason why they're seen as so dangerous (in real life not storylines) now is because pre-Attitude you might take a total of say five shots a year and that would probably only be the very top guys who were involved in the biggest storylines of the year. You would usually get time off to recover from it and it would be a big storyline moment so worth the effort. By the time the Attitude Era came around you had guys taking multiple chair shots every night they worked so of course the concussion rate went up as did the danger factor. So nowadays you have the double no go factor of it not being particularly useful in a storyline due to the fact it's going to take at least five or six shots to make it even start to look effective which is now seen as dangerous to the risk of concussion it can bring. I'm sure if you asked most wrestlers, they wouldn't be keen on taking chair shots every night of the week, but a few during the course of the year during crucial storyline moments or huge matches and they would welcome it, it's just that we're no longer in that place in the business.

I would argue that by 1995 although it's not called the Attitude Era they were well on their way towards it, ECW was starting to make waves and the competition between WWF and WCW was starting to really kick off which each side beginning to up the ante on each other.

So basically what people hated about the attitude era is that it "raised the bar too high!" But like I addressed before you can't blame Vince for raising the bar because at the time Vince was getting his ass kicked by WCW and it was WCW who started adopting dirty tactics. As for WCW going out of business; WCW put themselves out of business really and the only person I blame for "the current state of the business" is Jamie Kellner.

Another thing that appears to be coming up is that there were "too many chairshots!" Come on there where chairshots for years and years before the attitude era and lets face it people were bored of the old one chair shot to the head and you win thing. Lets face it people wanted something more real and extreme.